BookBar - "An Hour A Day"

Social Media Marketing: An Hour a Day by Dave Evans, 2008

"Building on personal empowerment and liberation the internet offers, consumers are actively connecting with each other and talking about everything...In process, they are reinforcing marketing efforts or beating marketers at their own game by directly sharing their own experiences on the social web"

Evans begins by discussing the earlier forms of online communication beginning with methods such as the e-mail and then goes onto say that everything began to change in 2006 when the website YouTube was created. This site allowed everyday people and organisations to upload and view videos created by other people and organisations. In 2006 YouTube were receiving 100 million viewers every single day.

These social media websites have allowed organisations, of any shape or size, to network. This has become a vital word in the world of social media as it allows organisations to expand and develop their knowledge as well as gathering important information about how their product, service or brand is perceived within the marketplace.

"The social web also connects more people than it would be possible otherwise"

Evans goes on to say that the knowledge obtained is not necessarily about your product or service but also about your customers or potential customers as it allows you to learn how to connect with them and understand what they are interested in. If you look at it from the customers perspective, viewing your organisation on a social media site, they are able to learn about your organisation and the values that you hold. This is important as you want to gain interest and a form of trust from your customers so it is vital that you make them aware of your product or service and also the values that you hold as these will be passed through the social media world faster than any traditional method of communication.

In order to succeed they must first make people aware and after this customers drive the marketing campaign by themselves by spreading the word through social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and then they later on they will hopefully "purchase" the product or service that the organisation has marketed.

For an organisation that, for example, focuses on tourism it is vital that they attract as many visitors and customers as possible. In order to do this, having an active presence in the social media world is on of their best options if they want boost the numbers of visitors. However, if they are to use social media as a marketing tool they must be able to update regularly and make connections with, not only potential customers, but also other tourism/hospitality or local businesses that would be interested in participating in their marketing campaign. So potentially spending "an hour a day" on your site can keep potential customers interested and may increase popularity over a longer period of time.

In order to achieve their objective of gaining as many visitors as possible they must clarify their business objectives and understand their target audience so they can use the correct forms of social media. For example if they're target audience were from the ages of 15-30, Facebook would be perhaps the easiest way of "spreading the word" because through the influence of social networks a huge majority of this market are now online and using this site and through the process of "liking" pages and "joining groups", word travels much faster than traditional methods.



(EVANS, S., 2008. Social Media Marketing: An Hour A Day. Indiana: Wiley Publishing Inc.)